Memorial Day has passed and now onto summer! Summer is going to be fun and lots of events. The annual Summer Family Fun is still in editing mode, but will be ready soon! There is also a special Mom’s Camps newsletter coming to, look for it soon.

In the meantime, we have been wrangling with RockIt Daughter about a phone. She is less than 10 yrs old, but most of her friends have either a phone or Ipad, so she is negotiating with us. Seriously, if we gave her a Facebook account, she would be happy. Thus, this week’s tips are based upon apps and keeping your kids safe with their phones.

5 THINGS TO DO BEFORE GIVING YOUR KID A PHONE

1. No checking in via Facebook, Foursquare or the like. There is no exception to this.

2. Disable texting while driving, a free app is Drivesafe.ly

3. Instead of a prepaid phone, get a second line on the parents phone which allows for more parental control over the phone.

4. Since “Unlimited Data” is becoming a thing of the past, have them use Wi-fi when playing games, apps and videos.

5. Stay positive with these devices. Download some educational apps, math games and free books.

6. Evernote - makes taking and keeping notes ludicrously easy, and in several forms: as lone text, as voice recording, or even coupled with a photo. Notes can be saved and searched.

7. Yelp - reviews for businesses is enormous and will save time and energy in researching needs.

8. Kindle – You don’t have to have a Kindle to use this app. All the books you purchase are downloaded from Amazon’s digital locker stored online, so you can use the same Kindle account on multiple devices.

9. Instagram (recently purchased by Facebook). This app helps spruce-up your images by applying lots of cool filters and lens effects to give your images a unique look and feel. But what makes Instagram a success is its sharing capabilities.

BEST RECIPE FROM ITUNES

One of the best and most popular recipe app from Itunes is Allrecipes.com. This is one of the best “go-to” sites for just about anything you can think of and with healthy alternatives. Now, it is the most popular recipe app. Check it out. Let us know if there is something you have tried with great success.

What do you think? Would LOVE to hear any and all input!

Have a great week and look for the Summer Family Fun chart and Mom’s Camps coming soon.